Power consumption is an important issue in conventional microprocessor-based embedded systems such as mobile telephone and personal digital assistant (PDA) products. Because of hardware and software complexity in such systems, a significant amount of power is consumed by a debugging capability built into the product. The debugging capability is useful for development and troubleshooting purposes by the manufacturer. However, the debugging capabilities are not used by the end consumer. Therefore, the conventional systems waste power performing background debugging operations that are of no interest to the consumer.